i don't understand, i thought you liked me!

on the intrinsic need to be universally liked, but accepting the fact that not everyone will

But I don’t wanna feel normal

I wanna feel special

Would you tell me I’m special if I told you you were right?

– “Special”, Carol Ades

Not everyone has to like me. Not everyone has to like me. Not everyone has to like me. I repeat this to myself over and over like a creed, until the words don’t sound like real words anymore, until my tongue gets tied, until I’m tired of saying it. I repeat this like I used to practice piano scales as a kid—mechanically at first, then with increasing desperation, as if getting the rhythm right might somehow make it true. I’d like to think this is growth, but I’m not entirely convinced that saying something out loud makes it any easier to believe. I’m not sure where it came from, this inherent need to be liked, to be loved, but I can’t get rid of it. I stopped trying a long time ago, but it might be time to start the process again. Maybe this old dog can learn one last, useful trick.

I think I know what the issue is, a friend of mine once told me, after I’d vocalized my thought process to her. You treat being liked like it’s a skill you can master if you just practice enough. And it hit me so hard that I didn’t even have a chance to mock being offended. Because it’s true—I approach being likeable the same way I approach everything else: with the absolute conviction that if I just try hard enough, work smart enough, I can somehow guarantee the outcome. I’ve never been the kind of person who doesn’t care what other people think of me. I want to retrain my brain to start thinking this way, but it’s kind of impossible not to care, given the career fields I’ve chosen to dedicate my life to—writing and music—where success is measured by people enjoying the art that is made. It’s just now occurring to me that maybe this primal need for validation is what drew me to these fields in the first place—maybe everything about what I’m doing with my life is founded on the idea of I Want Everyone To Like Me.